Background history of Facebook and the expected future Essay - 1

Background history of Facebook and the expected future - Essay Example Its main competitors are Twitter, Google+, IGLOO, LinkedIn, Bebo and many others. Its subsidiaries are Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus VR. In 2013, it posted $7, 872,000,000 in revenues, a 55% growth. Its founders are Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes (Facebook, 2014). Mark Zuckerberg serves as the chairman and the CEO of the company. Sheryl Sandberg serves as the chief operating officer, David Ebersman as the Chief Financial Officer and Mike Schroepfer as the Chief Technology Officer, Bret Taylor as Chief Technology Officer. Its Board of Directors is made up of Marc Andreessen, Erskine B. Bowles, Susan Desmond-Hellmann, Donald E. Graham, Reed Hastings, Peter A. Thiel. Changes involve Chamath Palihapitiya, former AOL executive joined to take over marketing, Van Natta left as the chief revenue officer, Mike Murphy, become the chief revenue officer and Matt Cohler promoted to vice president of product management (Facebook, 2014). SWOT is a structured method of planning that analyses a company’s Strengths, Weaknesses, opportunities and weaknesses. (Humphrey, 2005) Several factors (Opportunities) have placed Facebook at an advantage over others. Such factors are its ongoing expansion to the Chinese market, its diversification of its sources of income and how it has been tapping into advertising for income (this forms its major source of income), its tremendous increase in the number of its mobile users to 600 million, opening of the Facebook marketplace making it able to earn more revenues (and this is made possible because of its many users and wide coverage). It has also invested a lot of money in its marketing making it well known than other social networks, it’s ability to show the consumer behavior for businesses thus providing an analysis that aids decision making, enables businesses to collect user data through polls and surveys which could otherwise have